These Heavy Black Bones

Winner of the Charles Tyrwhitt Sports Book Awards. Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2024. Shortlisted for the Hatchards and Biographers' Club First Biography Prize.

This is not a story about making history. This is the story of walking away from it all. Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell was once a double British Champion and the first Black woman ever to swim for Great Britain. As her body and mind are sharpened through gruelling training, press scrutiny and the harshness of adolescence, Rebecca charts her career's ascent and her singular love of the water, before explaining why she walked away from it all.

A compulsive and unforgettable study of intensity, These Heavy Black Bones meditates on Blackness, identity and the ecstasy of peak physical performance, and lays bare the pressures within the swimming world.